Archive for the Scores Category

I share this image with my students each quarter as an example of well-considered mix map. I hope to inspire them to think of the multi-track mix as an organic, complex system. Some of them get it, I think.

I certainly do, and I know that Chris does.

If the map is not the place, then every place is ultimately unable to be mapped. Let the map and the place to which it points coexist in a system not of binaries but of simultaneity.

Let there be a score for the recording. A proposal and then a transcription. Between the two are the learning and the discovery.

The score Ted and I used for our 5 minute performance as part of Scratch Orchestra: Pilgrimage from Scattered Points. The notes for the score:

Coloured lines in four colours zigzag along in apparently random fashion like erratic markings on a temperature chart. Sometimes three are interwoven, sometimes two. They proceed from left to right through five systems. Sometimes a line abruptly changes colour. The following is a description of the sequence of events: Top system, line 1: green to yellow to red. 2: blue. 3: (starts two thirds along) green. Second system, 1: red. 2: blue to yellow. 3: green. third system, 1: red (ends halfway along). 2: yellow. 3: green. Fourth system, 1: (starts after an inch or so) blue. 2: yellow 3: green to red. Bottom system, 1: blue (ends a couple of inches before the end of the system). 2: (starts halfway along) green. 3: red.

Obviously we were working from a photocopy of the score as it appeared in the book, and so all color information was lost. What happens when you approach a structure with only some of the information? At what point does the score disappear and pure improvisation take over? Was the score merely a node of data to inform the context of the performance?